reaction to knowing I've done something wrong ran through me.
'I can't believe you. We're supposed to be getting married and you're lying to me.' She stood up and headed for the door.
'Rene…'
She kept right on going out the door.
I followed behind her, but she ignored me.
'Rene…'
She started her car and pulled out with out looking at me. Almost on cue, Al came around the corner and looked me up and down. It was the basset hound equivalent of saying, 'Is the bitch gone?'
I looked Al right in the eye.
'Yeah, she's gone,' I said.
Al let out an audible fart.
It really, really stunk.
4
I didn't much feel like sitting around in the stink thinking about what had gotten into Rene. With the gym not an option and no prospects for a date, my choices were scaled down a bit. Hell, they were more than scaled down; they were eliminated. It was time to go to AJ's.
AJ's is the dive I hang out in. There are no ferns, no fake antique wall hangings, there are no cheery wait staff saying,
'Hey guys, would you like to try a bloomin' onion?' Nothing close to that. There was AJ the third, who inherited the bar from his father, who had inherited it from his father. It wasn't rustic, it was old, and it smelled of gallons of flat beer and the flat patrons who had been drinking it for the last one hundred years. No one ever described AJ as cheerful, but he stocked Schlitz and that was all I needed.
The ten-minute drive from the Blue got taken up with Elvis's gospel number, I Got Confidence, which considering how I felt, was pretty ironic. Just the same, AJ's and the boys were the electro convulsive jolt of insanity I needed.
'It wasn't called 'Pig Bay',' Rocco explained.
'Pig Bay? Isn't that the Internet site where you can get livestock supplies on auction?' TC said.
'No, stupid. We're talking about Kennedy,' Rocco said.
'Let's not forget Marilyn Monroe. She had something to do with the Cubans,' Jerry Number One said.
'She was screwin' Kennedy and Sam Gandlefini,' TC said.
'Gandelfini is the guy on the Sopranos. He's too young to screw Marilyn Monroe,' Jerry Number One said.
'How old do you gotta be to screw?' Jerry Number Two said.
'Boy, it was DiMaggio getting screwed,' Rocco said.
'Huh?' TC said.
And so it went. Meet Rocco, TC, Jerry Number One, and Jerry Number Two, otherwise known as the Fearsome Foursome, AJ's brain trust. They were always here and always engaged in inane conversation. Usually it was just them, me and my cop friend, Kelley, and once in awhile my landlord, Dr. Rudy. AJ slid a Schlitz long neck in front of me before I opened my mouth. The TV was on Classic Sports with Bill Walton overenunciating about how he's still depressed about losing to Notre Dame. The Foursome moved on to current events.
'Awful thing about that fire,' TC said.
'Yeah, don't forget about the box and the cans,' Rocco said.
'What the hell is it with every place having a box full of canned goods for soldiers? Are these guys really dying for oversalted canned meat?'
'I don't think you have the right attitude Duffy. I was in the service and I loved a can of Spam once in a while. Took my mind off the battle,' Rocco said.
'That fire was college guys, wasn't it?' TC asked.
'Yeah, college age guys at ROTC training-that's rough,' Jerry Number One, said.
'Did they know what caused it?' I asked.
'Something about an electrical short or something like that, but some terrorist outfit has said they were responsible,' Rocco said.
'One of my clients who's a little on the paranoid side told me there would be a fire today. He's into all the government conspiracy crap. Iraq left him a little fucked up,' I said.
'You don't believe in government conspiracies, Duff?' Jerry Number Two said.
'I don't know. I don't think about it much.'
'You think Oswald acted alone? You think we didn't know Pearl Harbor was about to happen? You probably think we landed on the moon,' Jerry Number Two said, pausing to sip his Cosmopolitan for dramatic effect. Red stains from the Cosmo dotted his tie-dye.
'I don't know, Jer. I'm just a guy with a headache, drinking Schlitz.'
'That's exactly what they want, you know,' Jerry Number two said.
I decided it was okay if I thought Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, at least for tonight. My head started to throb a bit and the Schlitz seemed to be hurting more than helping. I didn't want to make the shift to light speed and start on the Jim Beam, so I thought I might cut my losses and head home early. Before I could get up, the talking head on the TV started interviewing some guy through a split screen set up. The guy's name was Dr. Theodore Martin and he headed up the team of crisis counselors dispatched to deal with the stress of the survivors on the campus. I paused for a moment when the guy mentioned something about how important it was to ventilate the emotions involved in a trauma as soon as possible. He went on about how debriefing was crucial to dealing with such an event. I had let the Schlitz help me debrief my own stressful day, and now it was important to get home and process some sleep. Before I could get away, the Foursome sucked me back in.
'What's an engaged lover boy like you doing out in the middle of the week?' Rocco said.
'Ah, no particular reason,' I said.
'Sounds like trouble in paradise to me,' Jerry Number One said.
'What's going on Duff, the wedding is off?' TC said.
'No, no, no…' I said.
'I never could see marriage,' TC said. 'I think the Mormons got it right.'
'They're the ones who started that college, right?' Jerry Number Two said.
'Yeah, Oral Roberts,' Rocco said.
'That ain't it,' TC said.
'It is, too,' Rocco said. 'I think it has something to do with having more than one wife.'
'What does that mean?' Jerry Number One said.
'You know, as long as you keep it Oral it's not cheating so you can have as many wives as you want. That's why he changed his name to Oral,' Rocco said.
'It's Brigham Young,' Jerry Number Two said.
'Yes, that was their motto. They encouraged it,' Rocco said.
'Encouraged what?' TC said.
'Bring 'em young, bring 'em old-it doesn't matter. That's one horny religion. They wanted to make sure everyone knew to be, as they say, 'be like a fruit fly and multiply',' Rocco said. I decided to be like a fruit fly and fly right out of AJ's. It was a long day and it wasn't a good one, so it was time to cut my losses. My '76 El Dorado looked almost surreal under the amber streetlights across from AJ's, next to the cookie factory. The cookie factory's silos must've been making that red goo that goes in the center of those sugar cookies because it hung in the air like some sort of fructose, corn syrupy fog. The 8-track played It's Midnight, which it was heading for, and the king sang about knowing it was late and that's when he's weak. I think I understood just what he was talking about, because I just didn't feel right. My head hurt, I felt a little woozy, and something felt weird with Rene. She's entitled to a non-bubbly day and it seemed needy on my part to read a whole lot into it. Just the same, there are times your instincts tell you something is wrong and you just feel it. Of course, having a love-life track record comparable to
